Tonight his appreciation of Laura’s cooking skills had been muted by the anxiety he read in her expression as soon as he came through the door. He watched her with a finger of ice touching his stomach as she brought a steaming dish of pasta to the table and served in silence.
“Did Kevin Mower call you?” she asked eventually, carefully avoiding his eyes as she twirled spaghetti round her fork.
“Should he have done?” he countered.
“He said he would.”
“You’ve seen him again, then? Any particular reason?”
“He asked me to look at Donna Maitland’s computer files with him — and I’ve got a cracking story out of it, as it goes.” For a moment their eyes locked across the table, challenge in hers, fear in his, before he nodded slightly.
“I should have called him. We need to talk,” he said quietly. “Not for publication, but he turned out to be right about Donna’s death. Amos Atherton doesn’t think it was suicide.”
Laura hoped that her surprise did not look as feigned as it felt.
“You think she was killed?”
“It looks likely,” Thackeray said. “I’ve got a meeting with Jack Longley first thing to decide whether we launch a murder inquiry. If Kevin’s up to his neck in her affairs I’ll need to interview him as a witness. I can’t get through to him on his mobile, I don’t know why, I’ve left messages on his voice-mail, but this he’ll have to co-operate with.”
“You should know why Kevin’s so distant,” Laura said. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? When he lost Rita, I was at risk too, don’t you remember? But you found me. You got me back. He’d never admit it, but that must crease him up.”
“Laura, that’s psychobabble,” Thackeray protested, remembering the day when he had thought Laura might be dead. It obsessed him like a wound he dared not probe.
“Is it?” she asked. “Is it really? I’ve seen you watching Vicky Mendelson’s kids. Don’t tell me you don’t resent the fact that you lost your son and she’s got hers safe and well and growing into smashing boys. I can see it in your eyes. And I can see it in Kevin’s too, when he sees us together and he doesn’t think I’m looking.”
Thackeray glanced away, unwilling to go any further down that road.
“I’ll need to talk to Joyce too, as she worked with Donna,” he said.
Laura glanced at her watch.
“I said I’d pick her up at nine,” she said. “She couldn’t bear to miss her governors’ meeting, even though it is a hassle for her to get to the school from here. She persuaded someone to collect her by car and I said I’d fetch her.”
“And is this cracking story anything to do with Donna Maitland?” Thackeray asked, hoping fervently for a negative response. Laura shook her head.
“No, except in the sense that she seems to have stumbled on it first. But it is about someone else you’re interested in. Barry Foreman. It turns out his girlfriend is a director of one of the construction companies bidding to redevelop the Heights. And if that isn’t fishy, I don’t know what is.”
“His girlfriend? You mean Karen Bailey, the one who’s gone missing?”
“Unless it’s someone else of the same name, which seems unlikely,” Laura said smugly. It was not often that she reduced Thackeray to the state of astonishment which seemed to have overwhelmed him and she could not restrain a small smile of triumph.
“The firm’s called City Ventures and they’ve got offices in Leeds. It all seems perfectly open and above board, pages on the web, lists of directors. I’m going to call them in the morning and get an address for Ms Bailey. If it is the same person, then I think your Mr Foreman has some explaining to do. And possibly Dave Spencer as well. Ted wasn’t in the office this afternoon but I don’t think he can turn me down on this one. It could turn into a major corruption story. I think he can spare me off flood watch for that.”
“You’re not thinking of interviewing Foreman are you?” Thackeray asked, trying to conceal his horror at the idea.
“Don’t you think he does press interviews,” Laura said, her eyes full of mischief.
“With his innocent businessman’s hat on I’m sure he does,” Thackeray said. “But if you start trying to trace his girlfriend then I think you would be taking a hell of a risk. You’ve already had Joyce threatened in her own home. You don’t want the same thing to happen here, surely? The man is dangerous, I’m one hundred per cent certain of that. Don’t go near him, Laura. Please.”
“I must,” she said. “If he and Spencer really are in cahoots over the redevelopment that’s a major story. The Gazette can’t ignore it. Do you really think Foreman’s behind all the intimidation on the Heights? Is he under investigation for that?”
“Not directly,” Thackeray said.
“He’s not your prime suspect?”
“He was a prime suspect long before the business with the gunman who left his employment so conveniently before he began taking pot-shots at hospital patients. Foreman got away with that and I’ve still got nothing I can pin him down with, if that’s what you mean. That doesn’t mean my instincts are wrong, Laura, or that he’s not dangerous. Simply that I can’t prove anything. I’ll have to talk to Jack Longley in the morning and see what he thinks about the Gazette butting into an on-going investigation. I think it’s a complication we could do without and you certainly could.”
“What the Gazette investigates is up to Ted,” Laura said, polishing around her spaghetti dish with a piece of ciabatta carefully and avoiding Thackeray’s anxious eyes. “But one thing’s for sure. If he thinks you or Jack Longley are trying to cover something up, it’ll make my job of convincing him to let me go ahead very much easier.”
Thackeray finished his meal in silence. He knew that there was very little chance of persuading Laura to change her mind in her present mood. One day, he thought, their jobs would bring them into such a violent collision that their relationship might be terminally damaged. But he had not yet found any way of deflecting her from a course she considered to be right and doubted that he ever would. He watched her as she cleared away the dirty dishes and put her coat on. There would be no way they could continue the argument once Joyce returned to the flat.
“Do one thing for me at least,” he said, catching her hand as she went to open the front door. She put her head on one side, a half-smile on her lips.
“I’d do anything for you,” she said. “Almost.”
“I’m serious, Laura. Keep me in touch with what you’re doing.”
“I know,” she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “I’ll tell you what Ted says about Foreman tomorrow, and what I’m going to do next. Will that do?”
“I suppose it will have to,” Thackeray said. But when she had gone, and he had heard her start her car and drive away down the hill towards the special school where Joyce was a governor, he flung himself back into his armchair and closed his eyes with a sigh. Laura was like a brightly coloured bird, he thought, and he loved her for her energy and grace and fierce independence. But after losing so much in a previous life he desperately wanted to keep her safe. Yet caged birds, he knew, would only too often languish and die. He hoped that he was strong enough to resist the temptation to trap her and, perversely, that she was strong enough to remain free, even if it did mean that they were destined to live in this perpetual state of tension.
He switched the television on to catch the local news which was dominated by the efforts of the water authority to keep the Beck within its bounds. A glum looking official, filmed standing at the point where the swollen waterway plunged underground on the edge of the town centre was complaining that the channel appeared to be accommodating less of the threatened flood waters that it had been designed to take, and that they would be starting a hunt tomorrow for an obstruction concealed under the buildings of the town’s commercial heart. That, Thackeray thought with some satisfaction, might keep Ted Grant’s troops far too occupied for them to find time to follow up hints of council corruption. He had no doubt that Laura had probably stumbled on something serious, but he fervently hoped that he would be able to forestall her inquiries with some of his own.